The use of and development of communications has grown nearly exponentially in recent years. The growth is fueled by larger networks with more reliable protocols and better communications hardware available to service providers and consumers. In many cases, the applicable communications network may include any number of service providers, access providers, legs, devices, interfaces, and other elements that make performance testing extremely important as a diagnostic, troubleshooting and planning tool.
In some cases, users are able to “game the system” by giving testing packets or synthetic packets special priority or otherwise specially treating test packets. Additionally, standard static test patterns may be unable to accurately determine the performance of different amounts, types, and configurations of voice and data traffic through a test path. As a result, getting accurate and useful test results may be very difficult.